India, China will drive global digital explosion: EMC-IDC study

23rd February 2013
India, China will drive global digital explosion: EMC-IDC study

Bangalore, February 23, 2013: The EMC-sponsored IDC Digital Universe study,  has revealed that the digital universe in India will grow 23-fold between 2012 and 2020. The digital bits captured or created each year in India are expected to grow from 127 ExaBytes to 2.9 ZettaBytes between 2012 and 2020.*

 The study entitled “Big Data, Bigger Digital Shadows, and Biggest Growth in the Far East” says India’s digital information explosion is being driven by a  proliferation of devices such as PCs and smart phones worldwide, increased Internet access within emerging markets and the boost in data from machines such as surveillance cameras or smart meters. Other contributing factors include increasing machine-to-machine communication (M2M), falling cost of technology, and digitization of TV, among others. Over time, the distribution of the bits within the digital universe by country of origin will more and more closely mirror the distribution of population.

Key India-specific  findings of this study:  

Less than half a percent of all digital information is analyzed today while 36% would provide valuable insights making Big Data a significant opportunity for India
By 2020, India will see 25-fold growth of useful information, which should be an inspiration for the adoption of Big Data technologies and practices.

Cloud adoption is growing fast and by 2020, 42% of all digital information will be “touched” by the cloud. While India’s digital universe is expected to grow by 50% every year through 2020; the number of IT professionals managing it is estimated to grow in single digits only. Although cloud computing is at a nascent stage in India, it is already having an impact on the digital universe.  The study reveals that 22% of the digital universe in the country in 2012 was in some way “touched” by the cloud i.e. stored, transmitted, or processed. This is estimated to almost double by 2020 with 42% of digital information to be touched by cloud, the highest in the world.

India’s Digital Information at highest risk amongst all countries covered: As per estimates, 61% of data present in the digital universe at present needs information security at some level. India has the highest fraction of information that warrants protection compared to more developed countries/regions.
India needs to act today on managing, securing and driving value from its digital universe. India’s digital universe is growing 67% faster than the U.S. at present. By 2020, India’s share will be many times more valuable than today and many times more volatile as well. Many times more bytes will need information security, many more systems will need real-time responses, and many more demands for reliability and speedy access will be made of the IT managers, CIOs, data scientists, and chief security officers that manage the actual digital universe.
The gap between Digital Information generated and available storage
capacity to grow from a third in 2012 to a ninth by 2020. The study revealed that India’s digital universe is growing much faster than available storage. While in 2012 only 1 exabyte of storage capacity was available for every 3.4 exabytes of data, by 2020, data is expected to grow almost thrice to 9.4 exabyte for every exabyte of available storage. It also highlighted that India spent $0.87 per GB to manage data; which is much lower than China, US and Western Europe.

India and China together contribute 17% of the digital universe and by 2020 the contribution from these two countries to the total digital universe is expected to be as high as 29%.

Says Rajesh Janey, President, EMC India and SAARC:“India’s digital transformation is happening at a rapid pace exposing gaps in technology investments that exist in enterprises today. These gaps exist in all aspects of digital information management including storing, securing, managing and deriving value through analytics. It is largely due to a piece meal approach as against an integrated roadmap.”

Adds Venu Reddy, Research Director, IDC India: "As companies are increasingly under pressure to better manage their business and align closer to their customers' needs, they are increasingly turning to highly leveraged storage cloud to enable them to run complex business analytics that can be accessed by a broad range of client devices. This enables key executives to drive faster decision making enabled by powerful cloud solutions that are designed and architected to be agile and flexible to adapt to fast moving business world."

*An Exabyte is a million terabytes or 10 raised to the power 18.  A Zettabyte is 1000 exabytes or 10 raised to 21.Do see a video on the Human Face of Big Data in our techvideo spot  foor a few days